“And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing … a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods.” Aldous Huxley on psychological totalitarianism (1959)

Dr. John Rengen Virapen worked 35 years for Eli Lilly & Co as an executive. He now speaks out on the many crimes “Big Pharma” was and is responsible for and he himself also participated in. Unfortunately, many of its crimes go passed public awareness as it enjoys the unethical protection from its big allies, the mainstream media, the FDA and governments.

A Fortune 500 corporation, Eli Lilly had revenues of $20 billion in 2008, making it the 148th largest company in the United States and the 10th largest corporation by global pharmaceutical sales. The company is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange and is a member of the S&P 500 stock index. Eli Lilly was one of the Nifty Fifty stocks that propelled the mid 20th century bull market.

Prozac

Prozac was one of the first therapies in its class to treat clinical depression by blocking the uptake of serotonin within the human brain. It is prescribed to more than fifty-four million people worldwide.

The label on Prozac states: In clinical studies, antidepressant increased the risk of suicidal thinking and behaviour in children, adolescents and young adults with depression and other psychiatric disorders.

Prozac in popular culture

Because of its wide appeal as a popular anti-depressant, Prozac has had numerous references to it in popular culture, including many books, movies, and songs. The autobiographical book Prozac Nation was authored in 1994 by Elizabeth Wurtzel; it was turned into a movie of the same name, Prozac Nation, in 2001, starring Christina Ricci. A 1993 book, Listening to Prozac, was a generally critical look at Prozac and its side effects. Another book, Talking Back to Prozac, also focuses on Prozac side effects.

Eli Lilly has developed the controversial vaccine preservative Thiomersal (also called Merthiolate and Thimerosal). Thiomersal is effective by causing susceptible bacteria to autolyze. SOURCE

Drug Controversy

Oraflex

the American version of Benoxaprofen, was withdrawn from the market in 1982, just one month after gaining FDA approval. A British medical journal found five cases of death due to jaundice in patients taking the drug and the FDA accused Lilly of suppressing unfavorable research findings. In 1985, the U.S. Justice Department filed criminal charges against the company and Dr. William Ian H. Shedden. Lilly pleaded guilty to 25 criminal counts and paid a $25,000 fine.

Zyprexa

According to a New York Times article published on December 17, 2006,[1] Eli Lilly has engaged in a decade-long effort to play down the health risks of Zyprexa, its best-selling medication for schizophrenia, according to hundreds of internal Lilly documents and e-mail messages among top company managers. These documents and e-mail messages were soon made publicly available as a location hidden Tor service,[2] and then made available on the public Internet. Eli Lilly sought and obtained a “Temporary Restraining Order” from a U.S. District Court on January 4, 2007 to stop the dissemination or downloading of Eli Lilly documents about Zyprexa, and this allowed them to get a few U.S.-based websites to remove them. The documents can now only be downloaded from public Internet sites outside the U.S.[3] These health risks include an increased risk for diabetes through Zyprexa’s links to obesity and its tendency to raise blood sugar. Zyprexa is Lilly’s top-selling drug, with sales of $4.2 billion last year. Source

Eli Lilly Agrees to Pay Largest Corporate Criminal Fine in History

Late last week, Eli Lilly and Company agreed to plead guilty to charges that it promoted the drug Zyprexa for uses that had not been approved by the FDA. As part of the resolution, Eli Lilly was left with the largest corporate criminal fine in history for a individual corporation: $515 million. Additionally, Eli Lilly must pay up to $800 million in a civil settlement with the federal government and the states. SOURCE

Prozac

Eli Lilly agreed on January 4, 2007 to pay up to $500 million to settle 18,000 lawsuits from people who claimed they developed diabetes or other diseases after taking Zyprexa. Including earlier settlements over Zyprexa, Lilly has now agreed to pay at least $1.2 billion to 28,500 people who claim they were injured by the drug. At least 1,200 suits are still pending, the company said. About 20 million people worldwide have taken Zyprexa since its introduction in 1996.[6]

The signs of violence and suicidality were there since Prozac was tested in premarketing trials. In May 1984, Germany’s regulatory agency (Bundesgesundheitsamt, BGA) rejected Prozac as “totally unsuitable for treating depression.” In July 1985, Eli Lilly’s own data analysis—from a pool of 1,427 patients—showed high incidence of adverse drug effects and evidence of drug-induced violence in some patients.[11] In May 1985, FDA’s (then) chief safety investigator, Dr. Richard Kapit, wrote: “Unlike traditional tricyclic antidepressants fluoxetine’s profile of adverse side effects more closely resembles that of a stimulant drug than one that causes sedation.” He warned: “It is fluoxetine’s particular profile of adverse side-effects which may perhaps, in the future give rise to the greatest clinical liabilities in the use of this medication to treat depression.”[12]

Dr. Kapit’s safety review described the clinical trial data from 46 trials with a total of 1,427 patients. He noted under the section, “Catastrophic and Serious Events,” 52 cases of “egregiously abnormal laboratory reports which were the reason for early termination,” and “additional adverse event reports not reported by the company [which] were revealed on microfiche.” Dr. Kapit reported: “In most cases, these adverse events involved the onset of an unreported psychotic episode.” There were ten reports of psychotic episodes; two reports of completed suicides; 13 attempted suicides; four seizures—including a healthy volunteer; and four reports of movement disorders.

In 1985 Dr. Kapit recommended “labeling warning [for] the physician that such signs and symptoms of depression may be exacerbated by this drug”. No such warning was issued until 2004. SOURCE

Darvon

Controversial Modus Operandus

Eli Lilly has been featured as one of the most unethical of all drug companies by the Wall Street Journal, edition of November 14, 1996.
[…]
For the pharmaceuticals industry, persuading able-bodied people to sample untried and potentially dangerous drugs is a tough sell. To woo their human subjects, most companies have to advertise heavily and shell out $125 or so a day, occasionally as much as $250; SmithKline Beecham PLC even pays referral bonuses. By contrast, Lilly advertises less frequently and, at $85 a day, pays what competitors believe is the lowest per diem in the business.

Alone among its peers, Lilly has become a potent magnet for homeless people. For more than two decades, Lilly’s testing clinic has drawn from the ranks of the homeless, often alcoholic men who drift in and out of Indianapolis’s church-run inner-city missions. Some mission directors privately express misgivings about this but say they are reluctant to speak up because they receive funding from a foundation built on Lilly stock, even though the foundation is independent of the company and its clinic.

Word of mouth about testing at Lilly — a company best known for the blockbuster drug Prozac — has gradually spread through soup kitchens, prisons and shelters from coast to coast. Today, so many homeless men come to Indianapolis seeking admittance to Lilly’s research clinic that Matias Vega, medical director of the local Homeless Initiative Program, credits the clinic with creating a “shadow economy.” One veteran nurse at the Lilly Clinic says that the majority of its subjects are homeless alcoholics.
[…]
Dr. Thompson says the practice of using homeless people was well under way when he arrived at Lilly in 1982. “We were constantly talking about whether we were exploiting the homeless,” he recalls. “But there were a lot of them who were willing to stay in the hospital for four weeks.”

He says an independent board that oversees the clinic approved the practice. Both the board and Lilly’s top executives felt that employing the homeless was a philanthropic act, Dr. Thompson explains, adding that he, too, took this position. “Providing them with a nice warm bed and good medical care and sending them out drug- and alcohol-free was a positive thing to do,” Dr. Thompson says.

Lilly has persisted in this approach despite drawing regulatory censure following a 1993 disaster with an experimental hepatitis drug called FIAU. (See article below.) But as for Lilly’s overall safety record, the FDA has no way of knowing, because oversight of Phase I testing is limited. Robert Temple, an official of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, says: “We haven’t seen anything that makes Lilly look worse [than other drug companies], but we haven’t looked.”
[…]FDA Once Chastised Lilly For Using Alcoholics in Study

In 1994, the Food and Drug Administration issued an unusual rebuke to Eli Lilly & Co. for using alcoholics in a drug study that triggered the company’s most public drug-testing disaster.

The experimental drug, known as FIAU, was intended to treat hepatitis B. In early 1993, two subjects who took FIAU in a trial at Lilly’s Indianapolis clinic experienced liver abnormalities, and one was hospitalized. The drug also was given to 15 people with hepatitis, who were enrolled in a Phase II trial at the National Institutes of Health. Five later developed toxic liver reactions and died.

In the aftermath, the FDA took Lilly to task for using two supposedly healthy test subjects who turned out to be alcoholics. In a previously undisclosed warning letter to Lilly Chairman Randall Tobias, the FDA told Lilly that “the use of volunteers with a history of daily alcohol intake … is not in keeping with good clinical investigational practice.” SOURCE